Starship Modifications
Starship Modifications: Movement, Defense, Weapons, Accessories As soon as heroes get their hands on a starship, they want to modify it. The desire for faster hyperdrives, more weapons, better shields, and possibly even some space for smuggled goods generally comes even before the first payment to a Hutt loan shark is due. Modifying a starship gives players a sense of ownership that makes them more connected to a campaign, and it serves other useful purposes as well. Heroes who want to improve a starship have a built-in reason to take risks to earn credits (or the help—and the use of the repair bay—of a greateful military group). Although Star Wars focuses on heroic action-adventure rather than the act of cobbling together credits for tinkering with a ship, many characters are simply more motivated if they know there’s a material reward on the line. Furthermore, a starship acts as a good base of operations, allowing heroes to have a place that seems lie home even as they galivant across the galaxy. Finally, as the heroes gain levels, a better-equipped ship prepares them for greater challenges. A Gamemaster should find these rules also useful for enhancing starships flown by friends and foes of the heroes as well as creating new starships to represent the thousands of different models of spacecraft found throughout the galaxy. Though designing a new model of starship is a lengthy process, it gives you a completely new class of starship from which you can build more variants. How to Use this Section At its core, this section is a catalog of new options to add to a starship. Though it includes rules for figuring the cost of a new system, what resources the system needs and how long it takes to install it, these are secondary concerns. Some players love carefully calculating how many quad lsers they can add to a freighter before they have to sacrifice some cargo space, and the rules are here for them to do that. There’s nothing wrong, however, with just choosing a new system and asking the Gamemaster what it will take to add it to your ship. Acquiring new starship components can be as easy as doing the right job for the right patron or paying a professional to bring your ship up to par with your needs. The GM might not make everything available when you want it, but eventually you should see improvements become available without having to count every cedit and every day in the dock. Similarly, if youe a Gamemaster, you don’t need to worry about these details any more than you want to. If the heroes’ ship seems underpowered compared to other starships of an appropriate Challenge level, you might add an extra system or two (perhaps contributed by a patron, friend, or even a bounty hunter who steals their ship and modifies it before the heroes get it back). This section should be a jumping-off point for more adventure and excitement, not a chore in number-crunching. The style of campaign you’re running is going to impact the relative value of any starship so much that no hard-and-fast set of rules could tell you for usre what to allow for the heroes, anyway. Simply use your best judgement: If it turns out that a ship is overpowered, simply arrange for a new system to short out when the starship next moves down its condition track. Make sure you provide an explanation to the players, though—faulty parts, incompetent labor, and sabotage are all reasonable possibilities. Each of these reasons can spark new adventures as, for example, the heroes track down the crooked outlaw tech who sold them a shoddy engine motivator. Cost Modifiers It costs more to build a hyperdrive that can move a capital-class ship than one for a starfighter. Bigger starships are simply costlier to improve or modify. Thus, each size of starship has a cost modifier, which is applied to the base cost of starship systems added to starships of that size. For example, regenerating shields have a base cost of 5,000 credits. When added to a Colossal ship, this price is multiplied by the ship’s cost modifier of ×5, for a final cost of 25,000 credits. If added to a Colossal (cruiser) starship, the modifier is ×500, for a final cost of 2,500,000 credits. A Note on Costs All costs given in this section are, by mecessity, approximate. the Star Wars galaxy is a vast market, and it’s immpossible to create a sytem that realistically represents the thousands of factors that could effect a major purchase’s final cost. As a result, the Gamemaster should feeeeeel free to modify these prices up or down as much as necessary to suit the plot of an adventure, the storyline of a campaign, or even personal preference. Emplacement Points You must meet certain size, bracing, and power requirments before adding a system to a starship. Often, it simply isn’t practical to add numerous new systems to an existing starship. Emplacement points represent the numerous factors that combine to limit how many systems a single starship can have. Each modification or new system has a rating in emplacement points to represent the effort required to add that feature to an eisting starship. The more emplacement points a modification requires, the greater its demand in terms of room, bracing, power, and integration with other systems. If you lack the emplacement ponts to support a system, you can still install it; however, more time and credits are needed to add the subsystems that enable your new systems to function. For every emplacement point you lack for a system, add 2 days to the base installation time, 5 to the Mechanics check DC to install it, and 20% to the system cost. Additionally, any starships that have modifications installed in this manner are automatically considered “used”, and any systems added without sufficient emplacement points are damaged beyond repair if the starship is disabled. This represents the harder work of finding ways to route power to your system, squeeze through already jammed conduits, and overcome the limitations of your overstuffed starship. Additionally, Gamemasters should feel free to rule that some modifications cannot be installed without sufficient emplacement points, such as passenger conversions when no cargo space is available. Gaining Emplacement Points A ship can gain additional emplacement points in one of three ways. Existing systems can be removed, making their emplacement points available for new systems. Thus, if a smuggler decides they need a quad laser more than they need maneuvering jets, they can remove the jets and gain the emplacement points needed to install a quad laser. Removing systems in this way takes half as long as installing them would take and involves no associated cost. In fact, the old system can normally be sold for ¼ of its original value (assuming it’s in good working condition and you can find a buyer). Alternatively, a starship can give up cargo capacity to gain mor emplacement points (a favorite tactic amone pirate and Rebel engineers). the freed space makes it much easier to reroute power lines, add small power generators, and securely lock new systems into the ship’s superstructure. It takes a number of tons of cargo capacity equal to a starship’ cost modifier for size (see above table) to equal 1 emplacement point. For example, to gain and additional 4 emplacement points for a Corellian Corvette, you must sacrifice 200 tons of cargo capacity: 1 ton × 50 for a Colossal (frigate) starship for each point. Finally, a starhip of Colossal or larger size can gain emplacement points by removing escape pods, gaining 1 emplacement point per 10% of the escape pods removed. However, doing this is illegal on anything other than a military starship, and it takes only a DC 10 Perception check to notice. A first offense might lead to a fine of 1,000 credits, a second 5,000 credits, and a third offense results in the ship being impounded and the captain’s accredited license being revoked. a decent bribe and a Persuasion check might avoid this unpleasantness, however, particularly in a seedy spaceport on a backwater planet—and some such spaceports don’t bother with safety inspections in any event. Unused Emplacement Points Any off-the-rack starship has some unused capacity, allowing some modifications to be made more easily. A standard, unmodified starship design generally has 1 unspent emplacement point. In some cases, this capcity is later used for a “standard” upgrade. Fooooor example, an unmodified V-19 Torrent has 1 unspent emplacemnt point, but it became standard practice to use this to install a hyperdrive generator in later models of the starfighter. Some stock ships are renowned for being easily modified. In part, this is the result of extra attachment points, power outlets, access hatches, and unused carrying capacity left over after the ship’s core systems are installed. such ships have even more unused emplacement points, allowing multiple systems to be added without removing anything or dealing with additional expenses. (Stock starships designed by the Corellian Engineering Corporation have 5 unused emplacement points unless otherwise specificed.) For ships with more than 1 spare emplacement point from the ''Saga Edition'' core rulebook and Starships of the Galaxy, see the Unused Emplacement Points table to the right. Nonstandard Modifications Rare or nonstandard system modifications (including those deemed by the Gamemaster to be ill suited for installation on a given ship) require substantially more effort to install, doubling the number of emplacement points required and multiplying the cost by 5. A modification is nonstandard if the starship does not have any similr system in its stock version. For example, adding a hyperdrive, shields, or a passenger compartment to a TIE fighter would be nonstandard, but adding new laser cannons (or replacing its existing laser cannons) would not. The GM is the final arbiter of what systems are sufficiently dissimilar to qualify as nonstandard, and particularly unusual combinations may be forbidden altogether. Installation Intalling a new system, or modifying an old one, is normally a matter of work orce, time, and a Mechanics check. This assumes the starship in which you are installing the system is otherwise fully functional, the system to be installed is freely available, and you have the tools and space needed. Remember that making Mechanics checks aboard a starship that has moved down the condition track incurs the normal penalties associated with that spot on the track. Under less optimal conditions, the time, money, and Mechanics check DC required could be increased by as much as 100%, and the Gamemaster msy decide that modifications are impossible in these circumstances. Frequently, a given modification might be possible only if the heroes get hold of the system directly, such as stealing a shield generator from a Trade Federation shipyard, recovering mothballed fighters from an old Imperial supply depot, or trading rare spices to a Hutt crime lord for the last known example of a particular hyperdrive component. Whenever possible, a GM should make modifying the heroes’ starship as much an adventure as a design issue. Installation Work Force The bigger a ship, the more people it takes to make modifications. For ships of Gargantuan size or smaller, a single person can do everything necessary (though it’s often much easier with help). For Colossal ships, the minimum work force is larger: Colossal, 5; Colossal (frigate), 10; Colossal (cruiser), 20; and Colossal (station), 50. The minimum work force can make a modification or add a new system in the normal installation time (see below). It isn’t practical for a smaller work force to make changes to such big ships, regardless of how much time the workers have. If your work force is bigger than your minimum, the installation can go faster, but the maximum work force that can be used on any given installation is 10 × the minimum work force for the ship’s size. Installation Time The base time needed to ad a modification or systems is calculated as follows: time (in days) = ((emplacement points) × (ship’s cost modifier)) ÷ (number of workers) In many cases, a new system can be added to a starfighter with just a single day of work. This is possible because many systems are modular, allowing different hyperdrives, weapons, and computer systems to be easily removed and new ones slotted in. Even something like reinforced bulkheads represents a predesigned kit of clamps and brackets that bolt on to existing hull plating. Still, some installations take large amounts of time unless a huge work force can be brought to the project. Installation Checks Proper installation requires a Mechanics check at the end of the installation time. The base DC for such a check is 20, +1 for each point of emplacement a system or modification uses. If the check fails by less than 10, the installation is a partial failure. You must spend half as much time and money to try again, and gain a +5 bonus on your next Mechanics check to install the system or modification. A check that fails by 10 or more is a total failure—all the time and monety spent is wasted, and you must start over from the beginning. Starship Systems A starship’s systems can be upgraded, replaced, and modified many times throughout the ship’s operational lifetime. A starship system falls into one of four categories: movement, defense, offense, or accessories. Each system has a number of factors that afffect its cost and availability, detailed in the table that accompanies each section. Emplacement Points: This value is the number of emplacement points required to install the system in a starship without incurring an additional cost or time delay. Availability: Some starship accessories have limited availability or are strictly regulated (see Restricted Items). A system that is normally available without restriction is categorized as common. Size restriction: Some systems can be placed only in starships of a certain size. Systems are normally limited to ships of a given size or larger, and some systems can function only in smaller ships. Cost: Sometimes a starship accessory has a flat cost or weight. Often the cost is determined by ,multiplying hte base number by the starship’s cost factor, which is determined by its size. If a cost is given as “base,” you must multiply it by the cost modifier for the starship size (see Cost Modifiers table above). If the cost is just given as a number of credits, the cost is the same no matter what size starship you add the system to. * Movement Systems * Defense Systems * Weapon Systems * Accessories Stock ships If you need to design a ship from scratch, rather than modify an existing ship, simply start with one of the following stock ships. Each stock ship has a cost and basic description for a generic, no-frills version of a starhip that size. To improve the design, use the starship modification rules to add and improve the systems and abilities you need. A lone character can’t design a starship from scratch without the Starship Designer feat, and even then normally needs the aid of a shipyard to build one. Once you have determined all of the systems you want to add to your stock ship, you can determine its Initiative, Perception, base attack, grapple, attacks, damage threshold and fighting space using the standard rules for these values (see Vehicle Combat Statistics). Remember to select a crew quality when determining these values. There is no hard and fast rule to determine the Challenge Level of a new stock starship. The easiest way to do so is to compare the new stock ship to comparable ships and use that as the basis of a CL, adjusting as necessary for the crew rating of the ship. : Starship Modifications: Movement, Defense, Weapons, Accessories __NOEDITSECTION__ Category:Gameplay Category:Game Rules Category:Drydock Category:Starships of the Galaxy